Backpacking Around the World 2008-2010

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It is best not to make many (or any, in fact) future plans if you intend to travel by bus in Nepal. Actually, it is probably best not to really think of anything besides trying to survive and holding very tightly to the seat handle, if you are lucky enough to have one on your bus. Even on such a short journey of 6 hours can prove to be a life threatening endeavor.

Not a great start to an already, universally bad kind of day: border crossing day. Our guide overslept by half an hour and our driver had hired a local taxi driver to take us down to the border because he didn’t want to. In the questionable taxi down the mountain that suffered from horn abuse, goat collision, and overheating brakes that were, thoughtfully no doubt, cooled by pouring rainwater collected from the road directly onto the brake pads.

Very long, irritating train ride. Beautiful scenery, inconsiderate cabin mates (hard sleeper with 6 bunks; ours are bottoms this one and only time…ugh), looking forward to a real meal not consisting of almond crackers and oreos.

Overall an unusually cruel and terrible travel day on a Chinese train. Got to Sim’s and finally we were able to collapse into the confines of a quiet room with movies and showers and a real meal that was not ramen noodles.

Saben is sick with Lin’s yak flu (sorry!) and took the day off. Laundry got rained on during the night and now not only smells weird but completely refuses to dry. This evening at 7pm we set out for the train station to embark on a 3 day journey to Lhasa, Tibet. It took 3 security checks, photos of our passports, and a smokey waiting room until we were ready to board our mobile home. Good riddance China, Tibet here we come!

Yesterday was a boring day for posting. Only exciting thing to happen was that we discovered we had bought tickets for the soft sleeper bullet train to Beijing despite our numerous pleas for “hard sleeper.” Granted it was a really, really nice train and it got us to Beijing in only 10 speedy hours.

Today, determined to get to the Stone Forest, we awoke even earlier (6AM!) and arrived at the minibus street to catch the morning “rush” to Shilin. We hoped for a cheaper fare (actually, the correct fare!) but today we were met by something even more frustrating: there were no buses would take us, no matter how much money we had!

Random Bug, because I can't find a photo that equates horrid frustration

This was a very bad day because we had to leave today and forgot to book ahead of time for our night train to Kunming. The 18 hours it was scheduled to last turned into 25 hours due to a landslide in this rather unpleasant seasonal weather (humid, hot, rainy, and generally shitty summer).

Due to the impracticalities of crossing the border needlessly, we arrived in Shenzhen via metro to the train station (direct train to LuWu Station from Kowloon, very nice) to find that there are no open spots available on the train to Guilin for today.

Whoa, talk about a great day! After a rather uncomfortable 12 hours in the Beijing airport, we were terribly eager to get on our flight to Hong Kong. To our great surprise, the airline made a mistake and overbooked our seats with another couple. To remedy the situation, we were bumped to first class! We were as giggly as two schoolgirls the entire flight!